Articles in 2002

Pitcher plants have highly effective ways of trapping their insect prey. Electron microscope studies of the pitcher of one species show how its surface features help to maximize the plant’s diet.

People have been fooling the latest thing in security for a very long time.

Against a background of declining public trust in traditional institutions, scientists must work to retain their high public-confidence ratings. There are warnings and lessons to be learned from the events of 2002.

The draft sequence of the genome of a dim and distant relation of vertebrates will allow closer inspection of vertebrate origins. Some people have been waiting more than a hundred years for this.

Most multicellular organisms pass through a single-cell stage from which they then develop. This feature may render them more evolvable.

In computer simulations, initially identical populations of organisms growing in identical environments follow very different evolutionary trajectories. Mutational interdependence is a key factor.

The cosmic microwave background radiation is a unique source of information about the early Universe. The detection of its polarization could lead to confirmation of an inflationary phase soon after the Big Bang.

In a technological breakthrough, two groups have shown that it is possible to study the turnover of spines — tiny protrusions on nerve cells — in live mice. But it's still uncertain just how dynamic the spines are.